I've been looking at software to reduce system e-waste and the BSDs seem to be where it is at for old systems doing computery stuff but Linux where it's at for computers doing peopley stuff. The weight (space/memory requirements) of most Linux installers for light PC systems, with a functional GUI, seems to be around 20GiB (the switch to GiB still annoys me on any system derived from base-2) storage and 2GiB memory. Which is tiny by todays standards, and light, but not light compared to the footprint of an OpenBSD install like this:
https://www.k58.uk/openbsd.html
Similarly for FreeBSD. But I was pleased to find observe the minimal i3 Manjaro install is still relatively light versus most of its peers despite having *lots* of nicites preconfigured (and lots not):
I also quite like Bodhi for old computers:
There is a balance between preconfiguration and bloat. I think Manjaro gets it right with their minimal installs. Can def. see why *BSDs are embedded in a lot of stuff though which is why I think it will never go away.